It Stands Inside Me Still

I was sat on the brink of the toilet as I contemplated getting up to wash my filthy hands. They were stained with blood from many nights ago. I hadn't thought of cleaning them. I felt I would be rubbing off some part of myself; a little speck of something I used to be, which was now gone. I remained sat. I could feel the strands of sweaty hair clinging to my bruised forehead. My knees ached. I fiddled with my fingertips, patiently waiting to flip the stick that laid in front of me. I turned almost religious. In my head I let out a prayer, not to any god, but to anyone who could hear and help me. To my dead mother, perhaps. Fear was trembling inside the cramped bathroom, holding my shaky hands. I tilted my head and looked at the broken watch on my wrist. It read 04.19 pm. "A few more minutes," I reminded myself as I tilted my head back to the same position as before. I fiddled again with my hands. I tried to remember what my mother had told me when I first started seeing guys.

"They don't want you Aja, listen to me. They don't want you."

Her voice echoed inside me.

"They don't want you."

I couldn't sit still anymore. I wanted to get up. Before me lay the stick, still facing the wrong way. I put my hand out and grabbed it, as I lifted myself up with my other hand. As I held it, I pictured the little sign on the front that could potentially kill me. I took a breath.

"Aja, don't believe them. You know what they want. It's not you."

"They don't want you."

I flipped the stick.

A wave crashed over my head then. As it dropped to the floor, all I could think of was how much that "plus" sign reminded me of the cross my grandmother wore in her casket at her funeral. I might as well switch places with her, I thought. I'm already dead.

I stood still for minutes. At some point, I must have said something, because the cat had begun scraping at the door. I flinched at once I realized that the cat had no water in its bowl. I took a big step over the stick, making sure not to touch it, let alone even come near it. I had to get rid of it. I just didn't want to touch it.

I fetched water for the cat. It nudged at my foot, and I kicked it away. It let out an offended sigh as it began slurping at the water. I watched it strive to replenish its thirst. Something inside me was burning up. Watching the cat made that fire a little less vivid. So, I stood there for some time. The cat didn't cease drinking. It went at it until something inside me broke down, and my knees with it. I fell to the floor. My throat let out a cry for help and I felt my whole body burning again. I felt like I might die. The cat looked at me, and as we stared at each other in some twisted sense of understanding, then the front door opened with a loud thud, and I rose to my feet in an instant.

"Kent locked up an hour ago, I went by the neighbors to discuss the mailboxes. I think they might be on board."

I stepped slowly into the hallway to answer him. He could smell something foul in the air already, I knew it. As I crossed the narrow hall, he looked me up and down with his eyebrows raised. It wrinkled his thick forehead.

"Hi," I said.

Peter came over to kiss me. I flinched a little. He took a step back and brushed the snow off his jacket. He had bought it just some days ago; it was yellow and silver. It shone in the dark. Now it was stained with melted, muddy snow. His boots were drenched in the same mud.

"How's the blizzard?" I asked.

"Stormy," he said. He laughed a little as he pushed me out of the way to enter the kitchen.

I trailed slowly after him.

"They don't want you" my mother had said. "They never want you."

I looked outside the window where the sun hadn't shone for weeks. It was dark, cloudy and snowing. The clouds lingered over the town like that for months on end the year before. This year was supposed to be lighter. Even the grounds beneath the mountain could expect sun, they had said. But neither those who lived on or over got any sunlight, let alone those of us on the ground. We were suffocated in meters upon meters of snow, making us stay inside for days, sometimes even weeks. At least I did. Peter had to work, down at the factory. He rented a scooter some months prior, but it was no good. I wasn't allowed to use it.

"Did you hear what I said about the neighbors?"

"Yeah. They're good with switching mailboxes?"

"Yeah," he said as he opened a can of cheap beer. He didn't close the door to the fridge. I felt a punch to my gut. I thought it was just a feeling, but then a second later, I realized it might just as well be an actual punch inside my stomach. If there was a child inside me, I was sure it despised me already.

I walked over to the bathroom. The stick was laying on the floor, still, facing upwards, this time. I looked outside the round window in the bathroom; the clouds looked different from there. Less shallow, in some sense. They weren't towering over me; they resembled a blanket that suffocated me, yet with a little hole to breathe out of. The snow seemed the same; still pounding at the window, beating up the branches of whatever trees you could still see peeking out from under the already buried ground.

I lifted the stick and rinsed it off in the sink. Some of my old blood washed away with the dried urine. I watched it drown down the drain, and almost felt a little bad. Then I put it in my pocket and clenched my fist. I wore my fear like an overpriced perfume – you could smell it on me. I was sure.

Peter was sat on the sofa, still wearing his work attire. His sweat stunk up the room. Even the cat skipped away from him. I sat down, right next to him and felt my hands tremble slightly. I wasn't getting out of it. I had to tell him. I had no money of my own for medical bills, let alone a way to get to any hospital. All of them were far away, even so. The closest one would be a thirty-minute drive during the summer months, but during the blizzard-season, it would be closer to two hours. I felt my heart sink to my stomach.

"Aja. Listen. They don't want you."

My heart was pounding.

Peter looked up at me where I stood, almost facing the wall. He walked over,

"Are you alright?" he asked, trying to touch my arm. I pulled it away, and as I did, the stick dropped out of my pocket and fell to the floor. As it spun around on the cold, wooden floors, I felt Peter's grip catch my arm and tense up. My body froze. Inside me, I was burning up again. He bent down, still making sure his grip was firmly clenched over my arm. I tried itching my neck, but he looked up at me with a blank stare and I moved my hand away from my face.

He touched the stick. As he flipped it, I thought to myself that if I tried to kick him in the face, I might have a shot at running away. But then I remembered I would have nowhere to go. If I wanted to escape, I'd have to kill him, and I knew I couldn't do that.

"What the fuck is this?"

My eyes glared over the trace of his body as he sat on the floor. I refused to speak.

"AJ, listen, you've got to tell me what this is right now. Are you kidding me with this?"

I squinted. Then I shook my head. I felt my eyes starting to water.

"Is this yours?"

"Yeah," I said under the sound of my breath. I could feel the circulation in my arm slowly being cut off by the power of his grip.

"They don't want you, Aja."

My head spun. Inside it I was praying again. This time, praying to my mother.

"Explain to me how the fuck this is possible," he demanded.

"How do you think?" I asked.

Suddenly I saw black, as his fist hit my face and the hand that he had over my arm moved to my neck. He squeezed it so tight I couldn't breathe at all. He punched me in the face again, bursting my lip. I could feel the warmth of my blood trickling down my chin. My eyes watered. I could barely see him. No air entered my system. My body was giving up. Then he let go. I fell to the floor, and knocked my head on the kitchen counter.

He stood towering over me, yelling that I was a slut. "Whore," he said. "You fucking whore."

I could feel my body tensing up, getting ready to defend myself by bracing my muscles. He could feel me tensing. He paused his yelling. Then he stepped so close to me he almost stood on my feet. I could feel his warm breath on my face and the smell of beer lingering inside his mouth. I shivered slightly. He looked into my eyes.

"You're a fucking slut Aja."

Then he began punching me. He started punching me so hard he broke my ribs almost instantly. I felt them piercing the flesh inside my breasts. I could feel my lungs bursting as well, when he pushed his arm up to my neck and lifted me up. I tried gasping for air, but he had sealed me shut. I could smell death lingering above me. I replayed my mother's voice.

"They don't want you, Aja."

He pulled me by my hair and dashed my head on the side of the kitchen counter. The corner hit me right above my eye. Something inside my head was pulsating, trying to escape, trying to come out. A vessel filled with blood must have burst because I could feel warmth spreading to my entire face. He looked at me and twitched slightly. His eyebrows were raised gently. It made him even more frightening. In his eyes you could stare directly into his fury, yet the rest of his face was so relaxed. As if he were to be looking at a little puppy. I attempted to lift my arm to brush away my blood-soaked hair, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled down on it, making it snap. It was a clean break. I screamed.

"You're killing me" I whispered under my desperate breath.

He had no reply.

He was still beating me.

My head had an open wound, that was gushing out blood with even speed. All my ribs were positively broken, and my wrist was snapped in half. The lower part of my neck was swollen, and I could feel my hips shaking from all his punches. I caught a glimpse of his wrists and saw how my blood had stained his fingers, just as mine were too. In the mirror I could see the back of him swaying gently to the beat of his punches. They were almost rhythmical.

"Peter" I cried out. "Peter, you're killing me." He stopped for a second. I looked beside him, where the cat had hidden itself behind a tall plant. The dead leaves matched the cat's brown fur. I smiled at it. Peter took a step back and started panting. I lunged forward and pushed him, in an entirely foolish effort to knock him over and crawl quickly to the front door. He barely moved. My hands were weak and my wrist almost bursting with pain. His eyes filled once again with fury. As he took the same lunge towards me, I rolled over and kicked his ankle. I heard him let out a slight sigh, before I rose and attempted to sprint towards the door. I reached the hallway before I felt an arm touch my shoulder. My whole body was screaming. Then, nothing. The arm slipped from my shoulder. I didn't dare look back. I made my way to the front door, picturing it as a symbol of escape. A shining beacon. As I stretched my hand out, reaching for the doorknob, I heard Peter's muffled voice and the cat's terrified scream. My neck wouldn't allow me to turn. Neither would my mind. I needed out. I was dying.

Again, my mother's voice echoed inside my whole body. Her words carried a sense of courage: and threat. They seemed almost entirely the same.

"They don't want you, Aja. Believe me, I know."

Outside, the wind was throwing punches twice as hard and twice as fast as Peter. The snow was pouring down like morning urine and my shoeless feet were at the verge of falling off, already outside the porch. Inside me I knew I could never make it far enough to survive. The nearest highway was miles away. But I stood no chance against Peter. He would kill me. He wanted to. Mother nature might still want me alive, I thought as I was forced to begin sprinting at the sound of the doorknob twisting.

I ran as fast as my wretched feet would let me. Whatever must this poor child think of its careless bearer, I kept thinking. Poor child. Poor, poor child.

"They don't want you, Aja." I could hear it clearly. Someone was saying it to me. It wasn't just inside my head. I heard it, as if my mother was right next to me. I was sure of it. Someone was talking to me. But I turned around and faced pitch-black darkness. There was no light nearby. Maybe I've drowned, I thought? Maybe I'm in the womb again? Maybe I'm my child?

I collapsed to the ground then. A lump of cold blood rose from my stomach and made its way out of my throat. I could feel it stick to the sides of my already swollen neck as it came out, and I could feel the gradual denial of air inside me. No more oxygen was allowed into me. My nose was blocked by frozen blood and an intense burning, that I had not realized until I was on the ground. I felt almost chopped in half. My body wouldn't respond to my brain. I choked on something. My blood, perhaps. At one point, I think I could feel the child die inside my uterus. Like a fire that was suffocated. The same thing was happening to me. The snow had begun burying me inside a deadly blanket, already after a few minutes on the ground, fighting for air. Fighting for my aliveness. It was to no use. There I lied. Helpless and alone, stretching out every limb in an attempt to force oxygen into my systems; maintain the replicating cellular processes that kept me alive for nineteen years, which I had surely taken for granted for too many of them, I realized as my last breath was within reach. I couldn't see anything. It was still dark. There was no white light coming to get me. I was dying. I was almost dead. Death held my hand for a second. It kissed my cheeks and gloated at my weak attempt to escape it. How death must have frowned at me when I looked up and saw my mother.

"Didn't he want you, Aja?"